ass burst
into bloom. Purple flowers appeared--not the usual muddy brown, faintly
mauve--but a redviolet, brilliant and clear. The period of generation
was abnormally shortened; seed was borne almost instantly--but the seed
was a sport.

It did not droop and detach itself and sink into the ground. Instead,
tufted and fluffy, like dandelion seed or thistledown, it floated upward
in incredible quantities, so that for hundreds of miles the sky was
obscured by this cloud bearing the germ of the inoculated grass.

It drifted easily and the winds blew it beyond the confines of the
creeping parent. It lit on spots far from the threatening advance and
sprouted overnight into great clumps of devilgrass. All the anxiety and
panic which had gone before was trivial in the face of this new threat.
Now the advance was no longer calculable or predictable; at any moment a
spot apparently beyond danger might be threatened and attacked.

Immediately men remembered the exotic growth of flowers which came up to
hide some of London's scars after the blitz and the lush plantlife
observed in Hiroshima. Why hadnt the allwise scientists remembered and
taken them into account before the bomb was dropped? Why had they been
blind to this obvious danger? Fortunately the anger and terror were
assuaged. Observers soon discovered the mutants were sterile, incapable
of reproduction. More than that: though the new clumps spread and
flourished and grew rapidly, they lacked the tenacity and stamina of the
parent. Eventually they withered and dwindled and were in the end no
different from the uninoculated grass.

Now a third change was seen in the color band. The green turned
distinctly blue and the sharp line between it and the rest of the weed
vanished as the blueness shaded out imperceptibly over miles into the
green. The barren spot made by the bomb was covered; the whole mass of
vegetation, thousands of square miles of it, was animated by a surging
new vigor, so that eastward and southward the rampant tentacles jumped
to capture and occupy great new swaths of territory.

Triumphantly Brother Paul castigated the bombardiers and urged
repentance for the blasphemy to avert further welldeserved punishment.
Grudgingly, one or two papers recalled Miss Francis' warning. Churches
opened their doors on special days of humiliation and fasting. But for
most of the people there was a general feeling of relief; the ultimate
in weapons had been used; the grass